atlanta — Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff The Georgia lawmaker criticized his potential general election rivals on Sunday, calling Rep. Mike Collins and former football coach Derek Dooley unqualified minions of the president. Donald Trump.
“It doesn’t matter which one wins,” Ossoff told a packed crowd at The Tabernacle, a concert venue in downtown Atlanta. “They’re both Trump puppets.”
Ossoff campaigned with the Democratic nominee for governor Keisha Lance Bottomsthe former mayor of Atlanta, in what their advisers described as the first of many joint marches aimed at showing them as a team. Democrats spoke behind a podium decorated with a banner reading “United for Georgia.”
This was in contrast to Republicans who were still fighting among themselves to determine their party’s nominees for Senate and governor. Hours before Ossoff and Bottoms appeared together, Collins and Dooley spent the afternoon hounding each other on the debate stage ahead of the June 16 runoff.
They pledged loyalty to the president, while rarely mentioning Ossoff, whom they described as too liberal for a state Trump led in two of his three election campaigns.
The competing events, miles apart in Atlanta, highlight the lead Ossoff and Democrats have in Georgia in a midterm campaign that could reshape the final two years of Trump’s presidency and shape the statehouse in this crucial battleground state.
Like Ossoff, Bottoms is awaiting the winner of the Republican runoff after defeating her Democratic rivals in the May 19 primary. Like Ossoff, Bottoms painted her potential opponents, Gov. Bert Jones and billionaire businessman Rick Jackson, with the same brush.
“They don’t look at Trump’s reckless policies as a problem, they look at it as a playbook,” she said, stressing inflation, especially for gas and groceries. “We already know we’re running against Trump’s kids.”
Ossoff is the only Senate Democrat running for re-election in a state Trump won in 2024, and holding his seat is crucial to Democrats’ chances of flipping control of the chamber. Bottoms is trying to become the first Democrat since 1998 to be elected governor of Georgia.
In the governor’s race, Trump endorsed Jones, who aided the president’s failed efforts to overturn his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden with false claims of voter fraud. The President did not take sides between Collins and Dooley.
With Trump’s firm grip on the Republican Party, Collins and Dooley showed only minor policy differences as each sought to outline reasons why they were the best choice to defeat Ossoff and advance the president’s agenda.
Dooley cemented his standing as a first-time candidate, and despite Republican control of the House, Senate, and White House, he cast Collins as part of a do-nothing government.
He added, “Congress is out of control.” “There’s too much professionalism, too much corruption, nothing gets done, and Congress doesn’t work for the people the way it should.”
Yet even as he portrayed himself as an outsider, Dooley praised two-term Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s endorsement and his family roots. Dooley’s late father, Vince, was the legendary University of Georgia football coach and longtime athletics director.
“I grew up in a football family in Athens,” said Dooley, who briefly worked as a lawyer before following his father’s career in college football and the NFL.
Dooley’s toughest blows against Collins centered on an ethics investigation into whether the congressman misused taxpayer money by hiring the girlfriend of his former chief of staff for work the woman allegedly did not do.
Collins insisted that the issue was merely a baseless “complaint,” not an actual ethics issue in the House. The congressman called it the “Nothing Burger.”
However, the Office of Congressional Conduct, after a preliminary investigation He referred the matter To the House Ethics Committee, Dooley noted that Republicans were among those who recommended continuing the investigation.
Collins, the son of a congressman, responded to Dooley’s description of Capitol Hill. He described himself as a “conservative backbone” and blamed any crisis specifically on a “broken Senate” — where Ossoff serves. He has touted his sponsorship of the Laken-Riley Act, a 2025 immigration law that, among other provisions, requires immigrants accused of certain crimes to be held without bail.
Both Dooley and Collins offered support for Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran. While Collins previously co-sponsored legislation that would effectively ban abortion nationwide, Dooley said states should limit access to abortion.
Ossoff dismissed Trump as a “failed president and a national disgrace.” He described Trump as the worst violator of a corrupt political system, and highlighted his family’s profits from cryptocurrencies and foreign real estate deals. He brought Collins and Dooley with him.
“They’re both corrupt political insiders, they’re both pro-war, pro-tariff, pro-cutting health care,” he said.
Ossoff hit Collins on the same ethical issue Dooley mentioned. Dooley was accused of benefiting from his brother’s business dealings with the government.
“The coach’s family got tens of millions in your tax dollars thanks to Governor Kemp, and then pumped money into the governor’s fund to support the coach’s campaign,” Ossoff insisted.
He was implying that Daniel Dooley is the founder of CENTEGIX, a company that manufactures and installs school security devices, including so-called “panic buttons” that contact law enforcement directly. As governor, Kemp authorized grants to local systems to enhance security, and later signed a law requiring Georgia classrooms to have direct contact with police.
CENTEGIX has secured contracts with school systems across Georgia, and Daniel Dooley has donated more than $150,000 to Kemp’s federal political action committee that is supporting his brother’s Senate campaign. But Dooley and Kemp’s consultants point out that CENTEGIX has contracts in 47 states besides Georgia, and other companies are competing for Georgia’s school business.
Connor Whitney, a spokesman for Dooley’s campaign, said Ossoff is “actually lying about Derek Dooley” because he “knows Dooley is the candidate who will send him to the bench this fall.”